Utopia

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Utopia

(aka: ZOMGDebuffs)

With today's high-end boss fights so tuned for absolutely maximum performance, it's important to know exactly what you're getting from your raiders. Do you have all buffs and debuffs available? Are the all improved? Are they active during the fight? Need to see that they were kept up during the fight?

WoW 3.0 introduced a whole new stacking system for buffs and debuffs. Add to that the myriad of hidden auras that are implied by talents, but don't appear on the tooltips. It's near impossible to look through that ever moving mess of debuffs on a target. It's just too much too look at. Nor should you have to.

So, here's Utopia. It will give you a very concise and clear view of your buffs and debuffs (see the buff display pictured below). With a fixed number of icons, which don't move or change. They'll simply be highlighted in red if missing; otherwise faded if unavailable, bright if present, yellow if present but unimproved, and so on.

Clarity is the key, and how fast you can answer yourself any questions mid-fight. I play a rogue, and because our warriors slack (they like to pretend to dps and moan about Sundering), we can very quickly see whether Sunder Armor is applied and, if it's absent, throw Expose Armor into our cycle. The icon is always in the same place, and always means the same thing.

The Display

An arrangement of icons showing the 'classes' of debuff, rather than the traditional specific debuff icons. For example, you will have one single icon representing Sunder Armor and Expose Armor. You don't care which is applied, only that it's there. The same applies to all the myriad of other buffs and debuffs which are now grouped into doing the same job.

By default, these icons are presented thusly:

Dimmed - Your group can't apply this aura

White - Debuff applied

Yellow - Your group has applied this aura but it is an unimproved version. Do you feel dirty?

Red - Your group can apply this aura, but hasn't

Blue - Aura is unavavailable because of a conflicting spell (Blessings, Curses etc.)

Mousing over any of the icons will show the potential of the raid. Highlighted lines show what your raid can do. A Tick shows it's done, a cross means it's not. Next to this you get the values for the auras, and if that's different from the maximum your group can do, this is shown.

Anything unavailable will always show the maximum potential value of a debuff with all improved talents, whereas when something is available it will show the maximum that could be done by your raid.

The progress bar will show the percentage that has been debuffed for a quick at-a-glance view.

Standard buff tooltips are enhanced to show you the real values that you're getting from your raid member's buffs.

Up-Time Module

The new debuff Up-Time recorder will record a fight, when auras are applied, removed, by whom. The DPS for the fight, deaths and significant boss events so that you can examine the timeline of your fight after the fact.

Donations

While donations are not ever expected they do help, and recent donations by a kind few are one of the reasons I have returned at this time to resume work on this and other mods. Please do consider how worthwhile Utopia is to you and help to continue it's support into the future.

The warlock spell crit % debuff isn't being detected correctly. Utopia calls it Shadow and Flame (the talent name) if you mouseover the Utopia debuff icon, but the actual debuff on the boss is still called Shadow Mastery.

There seems to be a new behavior in 4.0.1 with the "aura" type buffs, for example Arcane Tactics (+3% dmg). You won't ever see the buff on yourself (even if other players in the raid are providing it). This appears to be affecting the Utopia display.

There is an entry in the 4.0.1 Known Issues blue post saying "Ferocious Inspiration, Communion, and Arcane Tactics, are appearing inconsistently on the buff bar.", so maybe this is not an intended or permanent change:
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=27188060299
But people have reported the same issue affecting far more than just those 3, so I dunno.

It might be a misinterpretation on my behalf, but does anyone else have the problem, that
for spellpower the 6% version is marked as a higher rank as the 10% version? It shows the 6% number in yellow and apparently also sets the icon color accordingly.

Well, the formulas for Mark of the Wild/Blessing of Kings and Resistance Aura/Elemental Resistance Totem are visible on Wowhead, but for some reason there are no formulas shown for any other buff. That's a shame because the numbers given for almost every buff are wildly incorrect. :(

If they ever do become visible, here's something I was able to figure out that may be useful in the future. The value of "(level)" is equal to each level past 70. Note the parenthesis; without them, "level" really does mean the target's level. For example if the person was level 75, the value used would be 5. If the person was level 83, the value used would be 13.
At least, I think that's how it goes. Using that logic worked just fine for everything up to level 80, and I confirmed it in-game. For levels past 80 I can't confirm because I'm not in Beta. However that's the only logical conclusion because if you use "3" for (level) for describing level 83 in the formula then you get a number lower than what you get at 80.

But anyway, by continuing that logic for level 85 I came up with values of 265 Resistance for the Aura/Totem and 132(.5) for Mark/Kings (because those buffs now always give half of the Aura/Totem). I found it interesting that there's a really big spike going from 80->81, but that could be intended for Resistance and for all buffs.
According to the formula's math, the rest of the post-80 levels do scale linearly, going up by 6.5 each level.

Anyway, I'm curious now. I'll try to see if there's some way the Resistance buff formula is also used for other buffs by looking at tooltips given in-game.

Cast Speed Slow Debuff: missing Necrotic Strike (Death Knight) I believe. Also, there is an error in the description for this debuff. It says "Increases the cast speed", but it should say "Decreases the cast speed".

You're missing a buff category, Spell Pushback Prevention (or whatever you would call it). Paladin's Concentration Aura still does this, and now there is also shaman's Totem of Tranquil Mind which does the same thing.

Resistance Buff: issues with this were already mentioned below, but I'll also point out that Hunter's Aspect of the Wild (+130 NR) and Priest's Shadow Protection (+130 SR) aren't represented at all. Maybe you could label the category "Fire/Frost Resistance" - then it'd at least be "correct"? Also, there's a bug with the description - when clicking on the Resistance buff, I got a Lua error when it brought up the window and the description at the top appears as: "DESC.buffs.Resistance". It may be easiest to fix the issues with this by dividing it into 4 categories:

Fire/Frost Resistance: paladin aura/shaman totem 130, BoK/MotW 65

Nature Resistance: hunter aspect/shaman totem 130, BoK/MotW 65

Shadow Resistance: priest buff/paladin aura 130, BoK/MotW 65

Arcane Resistance: BoK/MotW 65

Finally, as a mage when clicking on the automatic buff/debuff selection for my class, it turns off the Stamina and Resistance Buff displays. I would argue that these two should be shown for anyone. Stamina is important to everyone to survive raid fights, and the Resistance Buff is most typically used to avoid AE damage or aura-type damage which affects everyone, not just tanks.

Yeah, amount/percent really is the same. I just ended up copy/pasting the phrase and changing a word or two to suit each category, so it wasn't a ton of work. In fact, I made sure to put any cosmetic issues or those of low importance last for each category, though I guess I broke that trend with the "Rank 1" notes, heh.
Anyway they were all just suggestions, not demands for changes or anything. I just like being meticulous and detailed when it comes to this.

Also neat, I learned something new. I thought Resistance Aura and Elemental Resistance Totem actually did give all resists now, but double-checking shows they were merely merged from their corresponding auras/totems. Oh well.

Thanks for responding to the other things about Bloodlust and the Ace GUI bug. They're just minor things that don't break anything, but I figured I should list everything then and there, even if it did get super long. :P

There is one other issue I thought of last night but didn't feel like typing out because of how late it was getting. Skills in Cataclysm, actually now in 4.0, have no ranks. They update automatically with each level. As far as I know buffs that add static amounts, such as Str/Agi and Stamina, will grant a different amount at each level.
Is there any way for this addon to somehow update dynamically based on that? To see the level of the people buffing you and showing you the correct information for the buff at their level? Or should this addon wait to be simply updated for level 85 because most people wouldn't bother using this for just 5-player dungeons?
Speaking of that, I realized I don't know how auto-downranking works when buffing people a lower level than you now. o.O I assume it just downranks to the exact level of the target.